Luxury tea brand TWG Tea became the battleground for a years-long legal war between co-founder Manoj Murjani and majority shareholder Osim International's Ron Sim, a dispute a judge dismissed as a very big storm in a tiny teacup.
TWG Tea was launched in Singapore in 2008 by French-Moroccan tea specialist Taha Bouqdib and Hong Kong-born businessman Manoj Murjani, who persuaded Bouqdib and his wife Maranda Barnes to move from France to build the brand. The company cultivated an image of old-world luxury, but behind the gilded storefronts the finances were shaky. In 2011, Osim International, the massage-chair maker led by founder Ron Sim, bought a 35 per cent stake for S$31.4 million, at a time when TWG had just three stores and was losing S$2 million. Sim candidly described the company as being in disarray and stepped in to help.
The partnership curdled quickly. Murjani stepped down as CEO in 2012 after falling out with Osim, and then sued, alleging he had been unfairly squeezed out. In 2016 the High Court dismissed his claims, with Judicial Commissioner Chua Lee Ming ruling the saga was essentially a disagreement between two strong-willed men rather than a case of commercial unfairness, and throwing out a counterclaim from Sim's side as well.
A second front opened over the twgtea.com domain name, which Murjani had registered in 2007 before the company existed. TWG Tea, led by Bouqdib, sued to claim it, arguing Murjani held it on trust for the company. The court agreed: evidence showed Murjani had called it our domain in a 2009 internal email and signed a 2010 letter declaring it would always remain company property, and he was ordered to hand it over. His countersuit over being written out of TWG's official history as a co-founder also failed, though the judge conceded the company should not have glossed over his role.
The brand weathered further storms, including a 2013 Hong Kong trademark defeat to Tsit Wing Group that forced its Hong Kong store to trade as Tea WG. Through it all, Bouqdib remained at the helm, insisting the brand must not become a dusty colonial relic. The Murjani-Sim feud remains one of Singapore's most colourful founder-versus-investor battles: a luxury empire built on tea leaves, nearly drowned in litigation.
Despite the courtroom drama, the brand itself thrived, expanding its gilded salons across Asia and the Middle East. The feud is now remembered less for its legal substance than for its theatre: wealthy men fighting over a domain name and a place in a company history, while the tea kept selling.